Longtime gamers know how terrible it is to keep waiting and waiting for vaporware. Turns out the characters inside these stillborn worlds hate not knowing where they're coming out, too.

Games like Duke Nukem Forever and Daikatana have shown that the years of pining away for an anticipated game build up massive amounts of frustration for almost everyone on the player and development sides. Well, a new in-development game called The Magic Circle aims to put players in control of a hero of a game that might never come out. I spoke with the game's lead creators Jordan Thomas and Stephen Alexander—who've worked on the BioShock games—about The Magic Circle and working on stuff that never sees the light of day.